By Emmanuel Uffot
In keeping with their promise to expedite action towards concluding their scrutiny of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 2024 Budget, the National Assembly yesterday passed a total N28.77 trillion budget for 2024 fiscal year earlier presented to them by the President.
In the budget which was jerked up by N1.2 trillion as against N27.5 trillion earlier presented to them, N9.995 trillion was set aside for capital projects while recurrent expenditure will gulp N8.769 trillion.
Similarly, the sum of N8.271 trillion is for debt servicing and N1.743 trillion is for statutory transfers.
The budget is predicated on exchange rate of N800 to a dollar which is slightly higher than N750 to a Dollar earlier fixed by the President.
Again, the budget has adopted the oil price benchmark of 77.96 US Dollars per barrel at daily production output of 1.78 million barrels per day.
For sectoral allocations, expectedly Defence took the lion share allocation of N1.308 trillion followed by Police Affairs N869.121 billion.
Education followed in that order with N857.134 billion, Health and Social Welfare N667.577 bn, Interior N362.552 bn and National Assembly got N305.947 billion.
Youths and Sports got N201.467 billion, National Security Adviser got N199.763 billion, Foreign Affairs N140.456 bn, Agriculture and Food Security got N110.248 billion which is far lower than allocations to the National Assembly, office of National Security Adviser and Foreign Affairs.
It is also significant to note that the office of the Secretary to Government of the Federation got higher allocation than the Presidency at N100.248 billion and N97.913 billion respectively.
However just as previous years, tongues are going to wag at the allocation to the National Assembly.
Out of the sum, House of Representatives is to take N49.145 billion and Senate N36.727 billion.
But curiously N3 billion is allocated for senate car park and N3 billion for procurement of books for National Assembly Library which onlookers argue has been a yearly affair even as the books are hardly bought.
Justifying the increase in the budget, the Chairman Senate Committee on Appropriations Senator Solomon Olamilekan attributed it to the removal of fuel subsidy and increase in exchange rates which has affected Nigerians and Government Agencies like the Nigeria Port Authority and Nigeria Communication Commission among others.” The increase in the exchange rate is behind the increase in budget. Also oil price benchmark and removal of oil subsidy. Also NCC and NPA we’re agencies affected by exchange rate which made us to increase the budget”.
With the passage of the budget on Saturday December 30 by the National Assembly, it was expected that the President will sign it today Sunday December 31, 2023 before the new year.
But as at the time of this report, there was yet no information that President Tinubu has assented the 2024 Appropriation Bill to usher in the 2024 budget.
